Rental, down payment and financing assistance are how we got into this situation in the first place. Giving people money just drives the prices up.
@helenslunch
There are way more people with money offering (or being asked for) over the advertised rent to get an apartment than there are people getting help with rent. It’s fighting over apartments that’s driving prices up. Not aid.
@robolemmyThink about this: you’re a scummy landlord.
CoA offers your tenant a nice $300 contribution toward rent. Do you:
A) Be a real swell person and let them keep paying rent at the current rate or
B) raise the rent by $300
And how would you know as a landlord that your tenants are receiving this money? Is it published somewhere?
Because you pay attention to market rates and see them increasing.
Your numbers aren’t adding up. According to the article - “Jackmon said her group operates an application portal for people applying for rental assistance. However, she said, “We had to close the application portal because we currently have over 7,500 applications (and) we only have $9.6 million.” Each week, she said, 50 eligible applicants are randomly selected based upon geographic and income criteria. The highest priority is helping those with the lowest incomes, she noted. The maximum amount a family can receive in one year is $6,000, with the average assistance at about $4,200, Jackmon said.”
I can’t find the exact numbers of renters in Austin, but one website says there are 440,000 homes in 2020, and another says that about 48% are renters. Wikipedia says there are 2.28 million people in the Austin area. Regardless, giving 50 families extra money every week would in no way cause market rates to rise. That’s preposterous. This is such a miniscule amount it would in no way affect the value of that many other rentals. Besides, in your supposition, you are saying that the landlord findsout about their tenant getting an extra $300. Well, again, how would they know that? The tenant could make $300 in any way that would be unknown to the landlord. Sorry, but your argument just isn’t holding water with me.
Your numbers aren’t adding up.
That’s because I made them up. It’s called a hypothetical. The actual numbers don’t matter because the concept is the same regardless.
Besides, in your supposition, you are saying that the landlord findsout about their tenant getting an extra $300
They find out because they pay attention to market conditions and see them going up all over town from all the people getting rental assistance, as I just said in the comment you just replied to.
@helenslunch
All the less than 7500 people getting rent assistance in a market with how many apartments? That’s a miniscule part of the market.Rents increase because more people are moving here (it’s gone from about 100k to nearly a million in the 30 years I’ve been here without much new building until the last few years) and Austin already had a tight apartment market in the 90s.
@FigMcLargeHugeSo you are against giving people help who probably need it the most based on some scenario you have completely made up. Nice. Thanks for clarifying.
